The Red Freight Cars

Nastya has grown up among the fields of a Russian village, watching an unfinished embankment and a row of red freight cars that never seem to move. Orphaned and dependent on her dressmaker aunt, she seizes an invitation to work as a maid in Moscow. The city promises movement, company, and a life beyond the village.

Inside her employer’s apartment, however, Nastya encounters a different kind of confinement: growing chores, demanding lodgers, loneliness, and kindness that depends on her usefulness. A chance conversation introduces the possibility of joining a union, while a theft brings the precariousness of her position painfully into view.

Miyamoto Yuriko’s 1928 story sets sharply observed domestic scenes against the streets, markets, newspapers, and holiday preparations of Soviet Moscow. Satirical conversations and intimate memories reveal the distance between public ideals and a young worker’s daily life. This complete English translation includes the original eleven sections, explanatory notes on Russian terms and textual details, and source information.